Its name means "The Mountains", and is the plural of jabal,
"mountain, hill", highlighting the region's mountainous nature .
Between the 12th and 14th centuries, the name
JibalJibal was progressively
abandoned, and it came to be mistakenly referred to as ʿIrāq
ʿAjamī ("
Persian Iraq ") to distinguish it from "Arab Iraq" in
MesopotamiaMesopotamia . The region never had any precisely defined
boundaries, but was held to be bounded by the
Maranjab Desert in the
east, by Fars and
Khuzistan in the south, by
IraqIraq in the south-west
and west, by
Adharbayjan in the north-west and by the Alborz Mountains
in the north, making it roughly coterminous with the ancient country
of Media .

Under the
AbbasidAbbasid Caliphate ,
JibalJibal formed a separate province, with
its capital usually at Rayy , until the Abbasids lost control in the
early 10th century. For most of the 9th century, however, the area
was ruled by an autonomous local dynasty, the
Dulafids . In the late
10th and early 11th century, the larger portion of
JibalJibal became one of
the
Buyid emirates, while the south passed to the
KakuyidsKakuyids .